


The Improbable Mechanisation of Marius von Raum

by horrorterroronesie



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Backstory, For Science!, Gen, marius gets his mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23177767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horrorterroronesie/pseuds/horrorterroronesie
Summary: Honestly, he didn’t know how it had happened. No, really! There was no way that a few lies, white lies if that, could have resulted in this. Not even if he considered the whole business with the psychoanalysis. And the vodka. Now, he was running away, his arm missing, blood soaking his jacket and his shirt and his pants and-The story of how Marius got his Mechanism.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 92





	The Improbable Mechanisation of Marius von Raum

Marius von Raum was running. Sprinting wildly through the back streets of a tiny backwater planet with the sounds of shouting and gunfire behind him.

Honestly, he didn’t know how it had happened. No, really! There was no way that a few lies, white lies _if that_ \- “yes, I’m a licensed psychiatric practitioner, yes i’m a baron, no wait i’m not a baron let me out of the trunk i don’t have any MONEY oh god get that knife away from me-” -could have resulted in this. Not even if he considered the whole business with the psychoanalysis. And the vodka. Now, he was running away, his _arm_ missing, blood soaking his jacket and his shirt and his pants and-

Okay, he was slowing down. Not good. His vision was darkening at the edges. Very not good! 

He turned a sharp left, still trying to keep an ear open for footfalls behind him. Yes, there was _something_ , but not the sound of someone running, it sounded more like-

Wings?

A blur of motion, and someone landed in front of him. A woman, shaking her hair out of her face as she gave him a slightly manic smile.

“Three questions! One, you are about to die. That’s not a question, but I feel like I should point it out. Two, would you be willing to give your body to Science? And three, can you play an instrument?” Metallic wings extended from her back, scraping against the bricks of the narrow alley’s sides.  
  


Marius wheezed, staggering into the wall.

“I- yes, yes, and yes.” No use in embellishing his last words. Not to such a sudden and strange audience.

“Wonderful! Would you consider joining my band?”

  
“Huh?” _Now_ he heard footsteps coming from behind. “Absolutely, wholeheartedly, we can go immediately right now come on.” Honestly, he had no idea if he was just hallucinating from the blood loss. But this angel of… Science, apparently, was as much of a sign as he could take. Sure, he’d take the hint. _You aren’t supposed to die today, Byron, you have things left to do._ _Things that aren’t_ _getting murdered in a warehouse by the space mafia. So just smile and nod at the nice hallucination-_

Without preamble, she grabbed him by the remaining arm and _flew._

The city opened up beneath them like a flower blooming, if a flower consisted mostly of slums and money-laundering fronts. 

  
  


“Okay!” Said the woman, raising her voice to be heard over the wind. “First! Informed consent! If the procedure succeeds, you will be completely immortal. Nothing yet documented is going to be able to kill you.”  
“Right. _Wonderful_ .” Marius wheezed. “Do I need t’be alive for it? ‘Cause I think I may not be for much longer.” And then all the fun he was having, with the hallucinating of science angels and so on, would end with a sound mostly like a _splorch._

“....No? I suppose not, but that’ll be another variable I’ll need to account for later… Try not to bleed out yet, in any case. You can die when I’ve got you in a controlled environment.”

He laughed weakly, feeling his remaining arm slowly slipping out of the woman’s grasp. His legs flailed in the air.

“Hang _on!_ If you fall now, I won’t even _resurrect_ you, I’ll just scrape the puree off the ground and feed it to the- oh, we’re here!”

They veered to the right, then dipped down so abruptly that Marius almost felt the blood rise back into the remnants of his arm. 

The window they flew in through seemed to belong to an abandoned distillery, or some other occupation that necessitated giant vats and metal barrels being strewn around in various states of disrepair. But that was all on the ground floor- the catwalk was wide, made of sturdy, _clean_ metal. As they landed on it, Marius saw that a corner had been cleared out to resemble something like a cross between an engineer’s workshop and a surgeon’s.

  
  


The woman turned, letting go of him and landing lightly on the catwalk.

“Well, I suppose we can get to it.”

She jabbed something into his neck and he knew no more.

  
  
  


When Marius awoke, he didn’t feel as bad as he had expected.

Mostly because he’d expected to be dead.

“Heart rate holding steady… blood pressure at 110/60. Eye dilation?” Something poked him in the side. “Open your eyes.”

He was still in the dilapidated half-lab. The woman was leaning over him with a surgical mask and eyes filled with unrestrained glee, and also a way-too-bright torch. He winced.

“How do you feel? Any abnormal thought patterns? Pain? Absence of pain? Don’t try to sit up yet.”

The last sentence came too late, as Marius attempted to push himself up but fell to the side as his arm buckled under him. 

Wait.

His arm?  
  


He did a double take. Where his arm had been- and then, suddenly, _hadn’t been_ \- there was a contraption of metal and wires and small cogs clicking. At the seam, it blended almost organically into what remained of his shoulder and upper arm.

“My finest work so far.” Said the woman, almost dreamily. “Disregarding prototypes, it’s only the _second,_ but still.”  
He stared.

“How’d you- What- That’s _wonderful!_ ” Experimentally, he tried to wiggle his fingers. Without even the slightest delay, the metal hand complied, and Marius _felt_ the scraping of metal against metal between each finger. “It can _feel_? And- wait. Did you say I was going to become immortal, or did I hallucinate that?”

“No, I did say that.” 

Marius laughed incredulously.

“Well. I suppose I have to thank you!”  
He slid off the table, pitching forward immediately as his new arm proved to be far heavier than he’d expected. Still, he managed to hold off from face-planting and swept into a deep bow.  
“Baron Marius von Raum, at your service! Say, madame Science, do you have a name?” His death now behind him, he felt a hysterical euphoria bubbling up his throat. 

“Hm? Oh. Raphaella la Cognizi.” Even absentmindedly, she said her name with the tone of someone used to roaring it triumphantly, full of hubris, maybe with lightning crackling in the background. “You’re not a real baron, are you?” She grabbed his new arm and forced him back up, turning and prodding at the joints. He gasped in affront. 

“Of course I am! And a real doctor! Of psychology, to be clear, not…” He waved around at the makeshift lab.

Oh, huh, it looked different than he remembered it from before the operation. More blood, cogs embedded in the walls and… 

He looked down at something pink, fleshy, and slightly pulsating. It was the vague shape and size of a grape, but fused to the floor around its edges.

“Is that… mine?”

“Haha! Oops!” The woman- Raphaella, it seemed- burst into action. She grabbed a flyswatter from a nearby bench and brought it down on the small organism. It splattered. “Pay no mind to that. It’s simply a byproduct of Science.” She straightened up, any attempt at a sociable mask falling off as she turned her focus to the red stain on the metal flooring. “Though I don’t understand why it only occurred now… perhaps the wiring around my own attempt was connected to the biological core too late? _YES, that would account for the lack of regrowth in blood samples, if it was delayed of course that would- ''_ He tuned her out. Now, this was interesting. A mad scientist, huh? But what she’d said earlier, along with the out-of-place insistence on informed consent, implied some sort of internal struggle relating to a clash of internal versus external morals-

Huh! Would you look at that, they were really two peas in a pod, monologuing like this. Marius was doing his mad science- because behavioural science was as valid as any!- in his head, but it was a fun moment of companionship as they both wound down.

  
They shared a look.

Then burst out laughing.

“Ahahaha- haha- I’m sorry, it’s just- you asked me to join your _band?_ ”

“It’s not- hahaha- not my band! I’m the pianist! What instruments do you even play? I had forgotten to ask earlier-”

“Oh, the fiddle and mandolin!” He kept laughing, feeling blood that, by all accounts, _shouldn’t be there_ pumping through his veins in double time. Or maybe 12/16.

“Perfect!” Raphaella snorted, returning to a neutral expression. “Now, before anything else, I will have to run some _tests._ Get dressed.” She motioned at a pile of clothes. Marius very abruptly realised he was wearing nothing but a bloodstained hospital gown.

“These aren’t mine.”  
“No, I stole them. The shoes and belts are yours, though. They weren’t too bloodstained. ”

  
  


He began to dress himself.

“Say, why do you have so many belts?”  
“Fashion!” He said, and tightened his boot belts slightly out of spite.

  
  


Finally dressed and theoretically (if not metaphysically) decent, Marius straightened up.

“Now, can you perhaps explain _why_ I was the one you-”  
  
Something pierced his neck and he blacked out yet again.

  
  


When he awoke again, Raphaella was ticking something on a clipboard. He surged up.

"What was that?!"

"Poison. I had to check the mechanisation worked. Just one thing left- please try to kill me."

"I-wh-"

"For Science. And then I can answer your questions."

“Using what?!”

She nodded at a gun on a nearby bench.

This was… irregular. Definitely didn’t fit with the theme so far, I mean, wasn’t he supposed to be the Frankenstein’s monster in this charade? Even though he had been _actually_ revived so technically it wasn’t a charade at all, and oh wait, the monster had wanted to kill the scientist, hadn’t it? Oh, and presumably Raphaella was as immortal as he seemed to be, now. That simplified things.

He took the gun and shot her.

As the blood returned into her forehead and the bullet fell out with a _pop,_ she stood up and ticked the final item on the clipboard.

“No bioprogramming. Good. That covers all bases… and means I have no business experimenting further.” She sighed despondently. “Stupid _friendships_ getting in the way of _Science.._.” 

  
  


They made their way out of the abandoned distillery, Raphaella explaining the particulars of his new condition, and also the bandmates.

Marius felt a nervous energy surging through his veins, even with the cold shock of his death earlier feeling like a bucket of ice water dumped on him. His mind reeled, trying to contextualise the up-and-down sequence of events just a moment before. He was alive? He’d joined a band? His _arm_ was _metal?_ He was _alive?!_

Another laugh escaped him.

“Raphaella, you said your ship was going to be here all year?”  
“Mhm. We’re touring.”  
“Well…” He wasn’t dead! And he wasn’t going to be! “I’m going to go do crimes now. See you in a few weeks!” He gave her a jaunty wave and vaulted over the nearest half-wall. Sure, he’d keep his promise and meet the band he’d so inadvertently joined. In a while.

But for now, the world was his oyster and he was an extremely durable fork, and there was maybe an all-you-can-eat buffet featuring somewhere in that metaphor but it didn’t matter much.

It was the day that Byron von Raum, middle name Marius, title ostensibly Doctor, died. And he’d never felt more alive.

**Author's Note:**

>  _I have a thirst that I cannot deprive  
>  Never have I, felt so alive!  
> There is no battle I couldn't survive  
> Feeling like this, feeling alive!_  
> (alive - jekyll&hyde musical)
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
